Innovation, influence and business in America's medical cities.

MetroHealth System‘s vice president of medical operations has resigned.Sarah Stamp is leaving Cuyahoga County’s safety-net hospital system to “pursue new opportunities for professional growth,” according to an internal memo announcing her departure. A MetroHealth spokeswoman forwarded the memo at the request of MedCity News.The memo, written by COO Dr. Ed Hills, praised Stamp for the [...]

Eighty percent of chief information officers surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers say they’re worried their hospitals won’t be able to meet whatever meaningful use criteria the government sets for electronic medical records systems.Chief information officers at healthcare providers and insurance firms are worried that their organizations won’t be able to win so-called “meaningful use” designation for electronic [...]

Meaningful use.The phrase applied to using electronic health records (EHRs) in ways that raise the quality of healthcare while reducing its cost is striking anxiety in the hearts of hospital chief information officers nationwide.Despite the $22 billion in federal incentives soon to be available to hospitals and doctors’ offices that install and use the [...]

A veteran financial executive and long-time board member has taken over as leader of the MetroHealth System’s trustees.The Cuyahoga County-owned health system appointed Ronald G. Fountain (pdf) as chairman of its trustee board at its April 28 annual meeting.New management led MetroHealth in Cleveland to a financial turnaround in 2009. This year, the system’s challenge [...]

Cuyahoga County commissioners have chosen two new trustees for the county’s MetroHealth System, replacing one trustee at the expiration of his term and filling a vacancy created by a second trustee who resigned at his term’s end.Like many county-owned hospital systems, MetroHealth has struggled financially over the years. The system turned a corner last year, [...]

Angeline M. Marano has left her position as chief operating officer for the MetroHealth System “to pursue other opportunities” less than a year after being appointed as the Cuyahoga County hospital system’s first COO in at least a decade.MetroHealth’s Department of Dentistry chair, Dr. Edward R. Hills, will serve as interim operating chief, said MetroHealth [...]

Diana Tirpak considers herself a living example of the greatest recycling program on the planet.Two years ago, her life was saved by something most hospitals treat as trash ’ the umbilical cord blood from a newborn.A baby’s cord blood is rich with stem cells, which increasingly are being used to cure [...]

MetroHealth System trustees on Wednesday approved spending nearly $26 million on new medical equipment, refurbishing public spaces like waiting rooms and patient units, building information technology infrastructure and setting up a fund to use during facilities emergencies.

Case Western Reserve University has licensed to a Pennsylvania company the right to make and sell three types of electrodes and a control unit used by researchers to do their neuromodulation work.

Philanthropist and arts patron Toby Devan Lewis is giving $625,000 over five years to the MetroHealth System to help patients overcome paralysis and improve their quality of life as they rehabilitate from traumatic injury. The gift will support functional electrical stimulation and art therapy to advance the healing process.